The emperor has no park

August 08, 2001

Honk once if you care that Mayor Richard Daley's Millennium Park extravaganza has become a financial sinkhole, a boondoggle for mayoral cronies and a mess of design corner-cutting and legal side-stepping.

Honk twice if this comes as a surprise.

It's awfully quiet around here.

Daley's imperial reign has become so complete that not only do we, his loyal subjects, keep mum about it, we packed our outrage over these things into a box a long time ago.

Possibly that's from exhaustion. After all, much of this is an old Chicago story. The cronies, for example. Remember Windy City Maintenance, National Asphalt Heat Treating, G.F. Structures, Michael Tadin and other Daley-connected contractors who in the past got special sweetheart deals worth millions? The park fiasco is the same game with different names. Plus, this time, the aforementioned design and legal shenanigans.

But as long as the streets are plowed and the garbage gets picked up, who cares?

Of course, Daley knows this. He also knows that in the dog days of August, taxpayers are either too sweaty or too out-of-town-on-vacation to pay much mind to what a debacle this public works project has become, as detailed Sunday in an investigative report by Tribune reporters Andrew Martin and Laurie Cohen.

Before absurdly blaming the problems at Millennium Park on architect Frank Gehry on Tuesday, Daley had an underling announce Monday that the city would be plugging the enormous financial chasm by raiding a public fund designated for other purposes. The tax increment financing district from which Daley plans to help himself to as much as $50 million is supposed to encourage development in the central Loop. (Geographical note: Millennium Park is not in the Loop.)

Daley announced the park project in March of 1998. He seemed so confident, businesslike and forward-looking--like the confident, businesslike and forward-looking manager he's reputed to be nationwide--when he assured taxpayers the $150 million project wouldn't cost them a cent. That was $220 million ago.

We're also being assured by Daley that two of his other major projects in the works, the revamps of O'Hare International Airport and Soldier Field, also aren't going to drain taxpayers.

Right.

Daley insisted the massive Millennium Park undertaking be completed in two years--a virtual impossibility from the get-go. The effect was to force costly revisions and delays because construction started on parking and other lower-level facilities before architects knew what eventually would fill the park up top.

Why the rush? Two reasons. First, the mayor wanted his Millennium Park open in the millennium year: 2000. Second, the city needed to start generating revenues from parking spaces beneath the park to pay for the project.

Instead, Daley now possesses one badly missed deadline, unexpectedly puny parking revenues, and, perhaps most embarrassing of all, no park--unless you count the western fringe of trees and grass that's more or less been completed as a great civic achievement.

It is hard to think of any major public works project, here or elsewhere, that hasn't faced cost overruns and delays. Navy Pier, the Sydney Opera House and Boston's Big Dig come to mind. Millennium Park, too, will no doubt end up a hit with tourists and residents.

Chicago taxpayers, on the other hand, will be stuck with something else: holes in their city's bank accounts and a broken promise from the mayor. Hot weather or not, old story or new, that's something to start caring about.